Short project Brand · Illustration · Signage

Vinoma

Handmade Argentine empanadas in Rohnert Park, California. Brand, illustrations and signage from scratch, with a short brief: make it look artisanal, because the production is artisanal and limited.

Client

Vinoma — Tapas Argentinas
Rohnert Park, California

Role

Brand direction
Identity, illustration and pieces

Scope

Brand from scratch
Shop, menu, outdoor and web

Period

2019 — 2025
Content and posters, year after year

The problem

Selling Argentine empanadas in California: the customer needs to be told what they're buying, without it looking like industrial food.

Production is limited and handmade, so the brand had to hold that promise from the very first contact —a façade, a shop window, a poster at the bus stop. In an industry where almost everything pretends to be artisanal, that is a drawing problem, not an adjectives problem.

There was a second task: the menu mixes Argentine classics with American inventions, and each variety needed to stand apart from the others without breaking the whole.

02 · The idea

The illustration doesn't accompany the brand: the brand is the illustration.

A logo alone wasn't enough to fill a shop. We drew the empanadas in pencil, one by one, and that repertoire became the brand's material: it covers the tablecloth, the menu, the cards and the shop window, and each surface can say something different without ceasing to be the same brand.

Logotype

Seal · Handmade with ♡

The logotype is a brushstroke with the texture of the stroke in plain view: irregular on purpose, so the hand can be read. The round seal is the version that holds up embroidered, engraved in wood or stamped on kraft paper.

Pattern of pencil-drawn empanadas with the Vinoma logotype at the center

Each menu variety, drawn separately. Together they form the pattern that holds the whole system up.

Vinoma wooden stamp printed on paper — The stamp exists as an object: it's stamped on bags and wrapping paper.

Vinoma cards printed on kraft paper with the empanada illustrations — Uncoated kraft and a single ink: the material does half the work.

Vinoma menu on kraft paper on a wooden table

The menu is the first piece the customer touches. There the drawing works as a photo and avoids the generic catalog.

03 · The system on the street

Outside the shop, the brand competes with giant food photos. The solution was not to fight: light background, lots of air, the name in brushstroke and a single variety per piece, named in English with its origin below — Classic Argentine, American Original, Naturally Italian.

Four posters by variety: Caprese, Spicy Beef, Plum & Bacon and Buffalo Chicken — One variety per poster, with its own background color. The series grows every time a new flavor comes in.

Three vertical Vinoma flags: Vinoma, Argentine, Empanadas — Three flags that read at driving speed: Vinoma · Argentine · Empanadas.

The two Vinoma menus: beef, vegetarian, breakfast and dessert empanadas — Each empanada with its name in English and, in quotation marks, the original in Spanish. The drawn crimp works as a bullet.

Vinoma t-shirt and cap next to a chorizo sandwich — Team apparel: the seal in white on black, with a worn-print texture.

The vinoma.net site open on a laptop, showing the empanada menu

On vinoma.net the same criterion: dark background, cut-out product and each variety's description as the only text.

What it left me

Artisanal isn't declared: it's drawn.

Any brand can write “handmade” on its sign. What convinces is that the stroke has irregularities, that the paper isn't laminated and that the drawing belongs to that product and not to a stock library. Six years of pieces later, the brand keeps growing with the same repertoire: every new flavor comes in as one more drawing.

Let's work together

Do you have an artisanal product that doesn't look artisanal yet?

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